i believe this method of analyzing drugs is unfairly biased because it doesn't take into account the virtues of the substances themselves. for example, cannabis and tobacco have medicinal properties and can be used as food in the same way as coffee (caffeine) and spiraea (aspirin).

tobacco, for example is said to be dangerous to users. however, the plant itself has medicinal properties similar to the plants mentioned above and when chewed can help to cure bronchitis!

Clearly the danger lies with the manner in which tobacco is being used, since it is primarily smoked and smoke itself is carcinogenic.

i think it is very sad that a healing plant such as tobacco can be misused to the point that it actually causes harm to the user and can actually cause chronic bronchitis when smoked!

One look at this study, and results shows the statistical flaws. The population that takes alcohol is 5,000,000 times the size of the population that takes LSD. Therefore, statistics for harmful affects on populations cannot be made, unless side effects and harm are averaged according to the population size.

Does this mean the study is just another wasted effort, well not necessairly. If you ban drinking alcohol then you create another prohibition era where normal people become criminals to partake in their daily substance of choice. The result, failure like the last time this was tried in history.

If, however, you legalize and tax less harmful drugs such as heroin or cannabis, the Govenment makes more cash, and controls distribution, versus having the black market, and syndicates of criminal minds controling distribution, as they do now.

So, which way will society go, banning alcohol and creating a prohibition era mistake, or legalizing less harmful drugs and taxing the sale and distribution?

I'm astonished to find that while most of the above questions are clearly outside of the scope of this daily visual blog, my fellow readers have nonetheless intrepidly addressed them to The Economist. Not only is the entire article (including a copious explication of the methods used) available free of charge from The Lancet's website, the magazine is running a discussion forum on the paper on it's Facebook page...

So yeah lets tell all the kids that LSD is better for you than Alchole. As good as it may be if some one did LSD to the same extend as someone having a few drinks every night i think the out come would change quite a lot. At least the danger to yourself part
They need to do one of these test were everything would be exaclty as available as the next thing, legal and cost the same for one good session!!! If you swaped everyones drinks with mushrooms the world would be a very insteresting place i guess :-))

It is hardly surprising that high alcohol consumption - or alcoholism - has such devastating effects.

However, it has to be kept in mind that a moderate alcohol consumption (up to 4-5 doses/day) is one of the healthiest things one can do. It is, for example, a more efficient protector from cardiovascular diseases than any currently available pharmaceutical treatment (such as the statins). All this has been scientifically well established for decades.

The downside is that the "safety window" is very narrow...soon after 5-6 drinks/day the harmful effects emerge. And alcohol is of course addictive - many people have difficulties in keeping the consumption in moderation...

I am struck by how many comments allude to the harmful effects drugs have on societies without discussing any of the trade offs related to this issue.

All drug-related debates should outweigh what is most harmful to society: Legalizing drugs or the influence drug trafickers can have over societies due to the money and power these individuals attain. Add the spending allocated to the War on Drugs to the latter.

I currently live in Guatemala where drug traffickers are slowly taking over the country (and government). This country, like many others, has seen drug production rise as Plan Colombia decreased it in that country (by the way, I doubt there will be any Plan Guatemala or Plan "any other drug-infested country" in the forseeable future). The last five years have been marked by increasing violence and a new form of instability that consistently takes a toll on the economy.

So what is worse? Regions governed by outlaws who care little about development and progress, or an increase in the consumption of drugs and their negative effects on society? I should point out that lack of development also causes "damage to health, drug dependency, economic costs and crime."

From a moral standpoint, is it not worse to "parent" people who wish to harm themselves with drugs than to have innocent, hard working civilians paying for a war they have nothing to do with (through violence, taxes and government)?

I am obviously skewed but nevertheless, these are the trade-offs we should all, in our different societies, be discussing.

Sir,
The information about heroin and cocaine in this study is not a good argument for criminalization : it is a very incomplete argument. The missing proposition is "Criminalization provides some positive counter to these ill effects."
It doesn't.

this type of chart demonstrates the inferiority of the British themselves.

how would tobacco (plant genus "NICOTANIA") be causing harm to the user when ingesting even a few green leaves of the plant itself can help to cure BRONCHITIS?

i'm ashamed that this type of "MODERN" research is going on at the expense of the taxpayer because clearly the PROBLEM is with the manner in which tobacco is being used.

for example, if people were to stuff their mouths with tobacco for the purpose of autoerotic asphixiation then yeah TOBACCO could actually kill the user in one dose!

it is really terrible that supposedly "UPSCALE LEARNED CAUCASIAN SOCIETIES" continually corrupt and desecrate mother nature's natural medicines. On the one hand they abuse the British ABUSE TOBACCO by drying it so it loses much of its medicinal value, filling it with unnatural carcinogenic POLLUTANTS and smoking packs of it in a single day. On the other hand they use this as evidence tat the MEDICINAL PLANT itself can be DANGEROUS TO THE USER AND OTHERS!!!!

The elite "British aristocracy" is basically a class of dishonest, manipulating, whiny, self-aggrandizing, opportunistic imbeciles. Do you understand???

how would tobacco (plant genus "NICOTANIA") be causing harm to the user when ingesting even a few green leaves of the plant itself can help to cure BRONCHITIS?

i'm ashamed that this type of "MODERN" research is going on at the expense of the taxpayer because clearly the PROBLEM is with the manner in which tobacco is being used.

for example, if people were to stuff their mouths with tobacco for the purpose of autoerotic asphixiation then yeah TOBACCO could actually kill the user in one dose!

it is really terrible that supposed "UPSCALE LEARNED CAUCASIAN SOCIETIES" continually corrupt and desecrate mother nature's natural medicines. On the one hand they abuse the British ABUSE TOBACCO by drying it so it loses much of its medicinal value, filling it with unnatural carcinogenic POLLUTANTS and smoking packs of it in a single day. On the other hand they use this as evidence tat the MEDICINAL PLANT itself can be DANGEROUS TO THE USER AND OTHERS!!!!

The elite "British aristocracy" is basically a class of dishonest, manipulating, whiny, self-aggrandizing, opportunistic imbeciles. Do you understand???

Well it has to be dried before it's smoked, and it was a habit that the british picked up from the indigenous tribes of americas eastern seaboard. It later turned out to be the cash crop that allowed the british settlers the means to begin their journey to becoming the most powerful country in the world.

So the first well publicized large study on how awful alcohol is . . . is actually nothing more than a study based on a questionaire. This study is nothing more than a poll, or "social science." The Lancet has certainly published plenty of garbage in the past. Has everyone already forgotten about the Lancet's wonderful peer reviewed study on autism and vaccines?

If you want actual science that looks at alcohol's effects, there is plenty of it. Almost every observational study ever performed has shown that people who consume alcohol live longer.

This is ludicris. I mean seriously what kinf of harm does mushrooms do to me? None. LSD? None. And why is Marijuana so high. Unless there is a detailed explanation of how these numbers were arrived at the value is zero. And unless the people who worked on this actually tried the drugs too their opinions mean nothing.

there are only 29 words of text actually, which cites a "source." but that is journalism right? You research a story and you put it on your front page right?

What is your point?

The economist could choose to put something else on their website but they didn't - they chose this. Is it worthwhile? Yes. Is it thinly veiled propaganda published ahead of Prop19 vote in California? Yes.

This study shows how naive people can be when it comes to drug-use. Alcohol is a serious drug that has horrible effects on one's health and mental stability, as you become more accustomed to it, it also becomes increasingly easy to abuse.

Measuring what each substance does individually per gram is retarded because doses vary among each drug, and some drugs are easier to abuse ,whether it be because they are legal, or because they are self-regulating, or other factors (marketing, lack of knowledge, psychology etc). Alcohol for example is easy to abuse because it is legal and you grow an acute dependency on it after a while, shrooms on the other hand are almost impossible to abuse as they seem to be a self-regulating drug. Some of the comments regarding drugs are very ignorant, this is the same everywhere in society and has nothing to do with social class. It is simply because there is a ''war on drugs'' that illegal drugs are viewed with such clamor whilst legal and equally potent drugs such as alcohol are even being advertised for on TV.

At the top of this list should be "Not Knowing Shit About Drugs," cause these comments are hilarious.

I would go through all the dumb comments one at a time, but they don't matter. The fact is that no matter how you feel about the illegal drugs, prohibition doesn't work. How many times do we need to learn this lesson?

@Working Man and the many who recommended the comment: read a little more carefully. The harm to users is ranked on an individual, not an aggregate, basis. Therefore, prevalence of use is irrelevant in the ranking of harm to users.

Legality and prevalence do matter in terms of harm to others, but even if we factor that out entirely, and focus solely on harm to users, alcohol would still rank well ahead of cocaine, speed, ecstasy, and myriad other illegal drugs.

The over-arching point -- that drug legislation in the UK and elsewhere bears no relationship to actual harm -- therefore stands.